


Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

by aderyn



Series: Compounds or Stars [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, ASiP, Gen, Post Reichenbach, and return, invisible vehicles, say it now, trains can bring you home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 11:46:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The city’s slipped past: All the Londons, all the Sherlock-and-Johns, reflected in the train windows, washed in the fluorescence of the station."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen shamelessly from The Jam.

 

_“The person approaching a new station in life is invested with gifts that carry the new identity…”—Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Intellectual Life of Property_

 

There are Londons, other Londons, with fogs and knives and the Green Fairy. The city’s slipped past: All the Londons, all the Sherlock-and-Johns, reflected in the train windows, washed in the fluorescence of the station.  This wasn’t their world; they travelled above ground, overland, in the invisible cars of the night streets.  John can still hear Sherlock say, _the London cab,_ his voice dangerous with the reveal.

No-one saw them go.  When they met, they slipped into the streets and emerged somewhere else, bewildered and amused.

_Then you came up, bloodied, from the station with a harpoon, chasing the white whale of your boredom. You went to the edge of the world and sailed off …_

The earth does seem flat. It’s near midnight.  A woman asleep in the station wakes, tips John a wink, and whispers something that sounds like _soon_.

From the tracks to the street he thinks, _the tracks need you;the street needs you; the city needs you; I need you._ He’s said he couldn’t, but he can—say it, that is—

They weren’t meant to be uncoupled.

At Bethnal Green, not long ago, an artist strung up stars for the London dead.  The trains ferried sorrow through the Underground and halted, humming, at Baker Street:

Not long. There’s a man out there with a train to board.

**Author's Note:**

> “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight”, from The Jam's 1978 release, All Mod Cons:  
> “…The distant echo -  
> of faraway voices boarding faraway trains  
> To take them home to  
> the ones that they love and who love them forever…”


End file.
